It's 25 years since Marion Michael Morrison, aka John `Duke' Wayne, succumbed to the Big C, and while probably only hardcore fans will spend 200 quid on the all-American icon, you should certainly consider buying one of the six-film, £50 box sets which make up this 34-movie collection.

John Wayne: Out West is inessential (though Rooster Cogburn is good fun), while In Action's most high-profile entry is ghastly Genghis-Khan-as-cowpoke picture The Conqueror. At War, though, includes a stalwart selection of gruff, tough flagwavers, with Sands Of Iwo Jima the standout. Essential status goes to The John Ford Collection, where The Quiet Man's blarney is outweighed by the majesty of the Calvary Trilogy, seafaring drama The Long Voyage Home (which finds Wayne wrestling a Swedish accent) and - available for the first time on DVD - seminal 1939 Western Stagecoach, with Wayne's now-classic crash-zoom entrance announcing the arrival of an icon.

DVD Extras:

Quality can't cover a lack of quantity, with a meagre selection of extras on offer. In Action is vanilla, while At War includes a chat with Wayne's son Patrick that wasn't available for review. Most impressive is the Young Duke doc in Out West. A 45-minute look at his early days, it features amusing scenes of his abortive stint as crooning cowboy "Singing Sandy" and footage of a deferential Duke with `Pappy' Ford. Even if devoted fans will learn nothing new, you can gaze in awe at the brillo-pad hair of host Leonard Maltin. Maltin appears again in Rio Grande's Making Of in the Ford collection, which also includes a doc that chats to regular Wayne co-star Harry Carey Jr and Peter Bogdanovich. The latter's recollections include Ford explaining why, post-Red River, he cast the Duke as She Wore A Yellow Ribbon's captain: ""I didn't know the big son-of-a-bitch could act.""